Teacher fired over pronouns row turns up at school again a day after arrest
A teacher who was fired and arrested after refusing to call a trans pupil ‘they’ has returned to the school.
Enoch Burke was officially sacked last Friday, after repeatedly denying his head teacher’s requests to use a trans pupil’s preferred pronouns.
But he showed up to Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath, Dublin, regardless.
Staff refused Mr Burke entry before he was arrested by Gardai for trespassing.
After his release, he promptly returned to the school once more before leaving later in the afternoon.
Mr Burke has waited outside the school again today – after he was dropped off by his dad – but was not allowed to enter the building.
The teacher stood in the rain and was seen writing in a notebook intermittently.
Mr Burke was previously jailed in September, when he insisted on returning to the school despite being suspended from work on full pay while a disciplinary investigation was underway.
He was placed under an injunction banning him from the building but continued to try and enter his classroom.
When Mr Burke was eventually arrested, he told court that being asked to use the pronoun ‘they’ was a ‘violation’ of his Christian beliefs.
While behind bars, the judge asked Mr Burke whether he would continue to show up at the school if released and he responded that he would.
He said: ‘If this court so determines, I will never leave Mountjoy Prison if in leaving the prison I violate my well informed conscience and religious belief and deny my God.
‘It seems to me that I can be a Christian in Mountjoy Prison or be a pagan and acceptor of transgenderism outside of it. I know where I belong.
‘My faith has led me to that place and will keep me there.’
He was released last December and told his freedom would be in danger if he breached the High Court order again.
Mr Burke has rejected his recent dismissal, insisting that he has a right to work and that he was ‘wrongfully’ taken in for trespassing on Tuesday.
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